Vulnerability
by Aubrey Simone
Summary: She had never really felt badly for the human before, but now, staring down at her tears, Kagura only wanted one thing: to protect Kagome.
1. Captive

**Disclaimer:** The anime/manga Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi. I, Aubrey Simone, make no money from the writing or posting of this fic.

**Pre-Note:** Ah. Well. It's been far too long since I posted here, and I'm almost shocked to find that I want to write this—it's going to be much darker than any of my other works, and I don't even know if I can promise a happy ending. At any rate, this is rated M for dark themes and suggestive passages, so if you don't like it, don't read it! Enjoy!

**01.** Captive

Someone was coughing. Hacking, almost, breath rattling in their lungs. There was the _clink, clink, clink_ of metal being shifted, too, and with her head feeling as though someone had stuffed it with cotton and proceeded to beat her with a hammer, Kagome just wanted them to _shut up_.

She tried to say so, tried to get her mouth to work out the words—_just be __still__, please!_—but her tongue felt thick behind her lips; thick and hot and dry and immovable.

She groaned, a muffled _ngnh_ sound that made her throat hurt, and then, with far more effort than it should've taken, the miko rolled onto her back.

And realized that the coughing, the rattling, the wheezing, was all coming from _her_.

Like someone had set fire to her brain, images flashed before her mind's eye, bright and brilliant and too vivid to be imagined: a bear youkai attacking the village; Inuyasha having trouble defeating it; seeing a shard in its chest; feeling a presence, menacing and dark, behind her; turning to see Naraku's red eyes gleaming sickly; and then darkness.

She had been caught; captured. Panic fumbled around in her chest, reaching with frantic fingers for a heart that battered an irregular tattoo against her ribcage. _How long have I been here? What does Naraku want with me? Why hasn't Inuyasha found me yet? Does he even know I'm gone?_

They were questions she couldn't answer, and the one that she could only made her sick—she _knew_ what Naraku wanted from her: what Naraku had _always_ wanted from her.

Belatedly, she realized that she couldn't feel the steady pulse of the jewel shards around her neck, and now there was fear—not for herself, but for the rest of humanity—struggling to grasp what little of her heart panic hadn't already claimed. Tears burned at the corners of her eyes, and the ragged cough she hadn't known was hers ripped from her throat until she tasted blood, until her chest felt like someone had attempted to cave it in and her lungs had crawled partially up her throat.

Pain—so much of it that she couldn't really register it all—blossomed, and she closed her eyes against the swell of it, breathing raggedly, wetly, through her mouth.

After a while, she began to catalogue her surroundings as best she could, wiggling her fingers and toes, grasping at the thin-seeming, delicate-feeling chain attached to the thin manacles around her wrists and passing her fingertips along the cold stone floor.

_A dungeon_, she finally deduced, the wetness in her lungs not preventing her from feeling the wetness in the air. It was cold, dank, and something—maybe her—smelled. There was no light, and she sat for an eternity, staring out into the darkness and trembling with growing anxiety.

She was one breath, maybe two, from bursting into tears when she heard the rasp of a footstep close by, far too close to be on the other side of a door. She froze.

"So it does work," someone said, voice bored and soft in the darkness. "I'd thought he was lying. Again."

Kagome swallowed. _Who are you?_ she wanted to ask. _Let me go, please. I'll do anything, just please let me go._ But her throat hurt too much, and the film of blood and mucus sticking at the back of her tongue didn't really make her feel confident about the state of her voice.

Flint clicked, and then the room was awash in a soft golden glow. Flinching, Kagome screwed her eyes shut, peeling them open a little at a time after the shock had worn off. She stared, for a moment, at a wall that was much closer than she'd thought it was, with a small steel ring embedded into it and the chain—_her_ chain, she thought bitterly—wound through it.

And then the person who'd spoken stepped around into her line of sight, and Kagome felt her heart drop at the sight of Kagura, regal and indifferent, peering down her nose, red eyes blank and even redder lips twisted as though she found something distasteful. After a moment, she sniffed, and then nudged at the chain with her bare foot.

"Naraku had someone craft this especially for you." Her lips twisted further. "You should feel flattered."

Something on Kagome's face must have given away her displeasure, because Kagura scoffed, waving one elegant hand. "No matter. Come on."

She reached down, and before Kagome could somehow warn her about how badly her body ached, she grasped the chain and hauled the miko, quite bodily, to her feet. The chain rattled, and with every nerve ending she possessed screaming in agony, Kagome whimpered out as much of a protest as she could, swaying on legs that shook like gelatin and burned as though on fire.

Kagura cut her a glance, and after she released the chain from its ring on the wall, she wound it around her fist, somehow still seeming ethereally elegant despite the frightening picture she made. "It's a side-effect of the chain. Come with me."

And with no choice but to follow or be dragged, Kagome forced her trembling legs into motion and followed Kagura out of the room.

Her mind was too foggy with pain and nausea to process anything after that; there was a bath, and food, and something about why she was really here, and then she was taken back to the room and left to her own devices.

Tired and sick and numb, Kagome curled up on the floor and closed her eyes, tears slipping from beneath her lids.

_Please…somebody…Please help me._

She cried herself to sleep.

And standing on the other side of the still-open door, lips pursed, Kagura frowned.

Because she had never really felt badly for the human before, but now, staring down at the tears that continued to wet the miko's cheeks, Kagura only wanted one thing: to protect Kagome.

Hands trembling, she turned and went down the hall.

* * *

**Author's Note:** And there's that. I'm thinking that all of the chapters will be about this short, but I'm not going to promise any sort of regular update schedule. At any rate, please review, and thanks for reading!

**~Aubrey**


	2. Mind Games

**02. **Mind Games

When she woke up again, it was to the soft comfort of a futon, and for a brilliant, scintillating moment, Kagome thought—_prayed_—that she'd been dreaming.

And then her eyes focused on the hands she had curled near her face, and the manacles that sat like silver bruises around her wrists.

Whatever foolish hope she'd been harboring died a swift death, and she closed her eyes against the nearly overwhelming urge to cry. Fingers trembling, she swept her hair back away from her face, repeatedly telling herself that everything was fine, that Inuyasha would be coming to get her soon, that—

"Finally awake, I see."

She was up and across the room before she'd fully recognized the voice, but when her back was pressed firmly to the wall, Kagome glared.

Smiling as though she wasn't trying to kill him with her eyes, Naraku spread his hands in a placating gesture, dark purple sleeves falling away to reveal the pale skin of his wrists. "No need to be so hostile."

"Fuck you!" she spat, and despite the searing pain that raced up and down her throat, it felt good to say the words.

"Tch, such language. I do believe your hanyou has been a bad influence on you." She tried to decide if cursing him again would be worth the pain, and in the end she kept her mouth shut, though more because he was watching her expectantly and not because she minded the agony. Lightly lifting his shoulders in a nonchalant shrug, Naraku strolled further into the room, smiling mockingly when Kagome shrank back against the wall.

"I'm not going to hurt you." He inspected his claws. "At least, not physically." When he looked up at her again, his gaze was so intense that she felt almost like he had peeled away the layers of her body and seen straight into her soul. She shuddered. "Surely you must know by now that I am more interested in games of the mind?"

It was a rhetorical question, she knew it was, and still Kagome turned the answer over in her mind, her belly flipping uneasily as he watched her. He smiled. "Ah, yes, of course you do," he murmured after a moment, stepping so close that she could smell him—_sake_ and sex and a husky something that reminded her of smoke—and she turned her head, not even bothering to keep her eyes open.

Unperturbed by her recoil, Naraku leaned even closer, his hair falling heavily against her shoulders. "I now have more than half of the Jewel," he said, voice pitched low. "Your friends have the rest of it, and all that is left is for them to bring it to me. And they will, of course. Eventually. But first…"

He stepped back, and without his heat and his smell and his _presence_ so close, Kagome felt like she could breathe easier; she drew in a shaky breath, looking back up in time to see Naraku pull something from his kimono. He shifted it—a small black pouch—between his fingers for a moment, and then held it up by the red strings that kept it closed. "A new invention of mine," he informed her fondly. "When thrown to the wind, it will scatter your scent across all of Nippon, and your poor little puppy will never know where to search."

She wanted to tell him that Inuyasha would never fall for a trick like that, but behind the thought came the realization that Inuyasha had always, _always_ found her by scent, or by her miko powers. She frowned.

Digging deep, just the way Kaede had taught her to do over the past three years, Kagome reached for the pool of warmth behind her heart, and when she got to the place where her gods-gifted energies usually rested, a jolt of pain flashed like lightning down her spine.

The edges of her vision were instantly mottled with black and white dots, and the sound of her heart thundering dangerously fast in her ears didn't keep her from hearing Naraku's laugh.

"I'm surprised it took you so long to try," he said, and the amusement in his voice made her want to hit him. "That magnificent little chain worked perfectly, wouldn't you agree? I have to remember to thank Kikyo for that."

Mention of her predecessor's name made the headache building behind Kagome's eyes that much worse, and she clenched her fists at her sides, silently cursing the golem with everything she had in her.

As though tracking her thoughts, Naraku laughed again, a pleased rumble of sound. Behind him, the void-child appeared in the doorway, and without speaking a word, drifted to stand before Kagome, her mirror canted upwards and an image displayed in its glass: Inuyasha, standing opposite Kagura in a small clearing.

The wind sorceress had just landed, and was tucking her feather back into her hair, her eyes roving disdainfully over Inuyasha's tense figure.

Tetsusaiga was drawn, curving dangerously through the whipping wind, and in Inuyasha's eyes, there was the barely contained glimmer of rage and loss. Her heart ached to see him that way, and when he opened his mouth to speak, the sound of his voice, as clear as it would've been if he'd been standing right beside her, made her hands tremble.

"Where is she, bitch?" he asked, the hostility he couldn't quite keep out of his eyes turning his voice into a low rumble.

"She's…safe," Kagura responded, her fan tucked away despite the wind that tugged at she and Inuyasha's clothes. "Relatively."

"Tell me _where_!" Inuyasha roared, grip tightening on his sword until his knuckles were white. "You've got her scent all over you, and I swear if you've hurt her I'm gonna rip your _fucking_ heart out!"

Unfazed by the hanyou's threat, Kagura waved a hand. "Unfortunately for you, Naraku has already taken care of that." Inuyasha scowled, and Kagura went on. "She won't be hurt any more than she already has been. My master has…other uses for her."

The next few seconds were a flurry of movement and a cacophony of sound—Inuyasha lunging, a terrifying roar tearing from his throat; Kagura whipping her fan up faster than Kagome could follow; the screaming of the wind through the trees. Then came a flash of silver; the ringing, vibrating hum of metal being struck; a grunt; a gasp. And then it stopped.

And Inuyasha had somehow been knocked to his knees, blood pouring in frighteningly thick rivulets from the wounds slashing across his torso. Kagome clapped a hand over her mouth and whimpered despite herself, wanting to force her way _through_ Kanna's mirror, to throw herself across Inuyasha's body and protect him like he had protected her so many times before.

"Such a brute, Inuyasha," Kagura haughtily insulted, standing just inches away from the blood pooling in the grass. "I've only come to deliver a message: Naraku sends his regards, and hopes that you like his gift."

She stepped back, and as she did, Inuyasha's head snapped up and he inhaled deeply, eyes wide beneath his heavy brows. "K-Kagome?" He inhaled again, and then turned his head this way and that, confusion marring his brow. "Kagome? Where are you?"

Movement in the corner of her eye drew Kagome's attention away from Kanna's mirror, and she realized, with dread balling into her stomach, that Naraku had moved to the window and was dumping the pouch out into the air, the powder glimmering pink and silver and red in the sunlight.

The realization that her hanyou _wasn't_ going to find her was sinking in, and she looked back to the mirror, away from where Naraku was tucking the now-empty pouch back into his kimono and turning to resume his position behind Kanna.

And for a moment, for one heart-stopping, breath-seizing moment, Inuyasha, in his frantic search, looked at her, _right at her_, and the pain shining in the sunshine depths of his eyes was enough.

Turning away, Kagome closed her eyes. "Go away," she whispered, and the ache in her heart was far too great for her to care about the agony of her throat. She screamed. "_Go away_!"

Her legs gave out, and she buried her face in her hands, anger and heartache and nausea fighting for purchase at the forefront of her mind. She hardly noticed when Naraku, smirking, led Kanna silently out of the room.

* * *

**Author's Note**: Well, perhaps the last chapter wasn't enough to prompt more than one review (and a special **_thank you_** to the one who did - you made my day!), but maybe now, with a little more of Naraku's plan revealed, you all will be tempted to tell me what you think!

At any rate, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed!

**~Aubrey**


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